custom runtime GDB extensions

[Bruce Korb <bruce.korb@gmail.com>]

Hi,

I don't know exactly why the dlopen of shared objects is disparaged,
because I couldn't find references via Googling.  Anyway, my desire
was to augment GDB with code derived from compiled C code that
converts back and forth between bit masks and bit names.  I didn't
want to convert C to Python and I didn't want to maintain separate
Python code by hand.  So, I wanted wrapper code that could implement
GDB extensions.  I did find references to, "so we don't want C code,
so we'll do it in Python", but no references to the rationale.

So, anyway, thank you, Abhijit.  I've successfully applied your
patch.  Now to my main point:  why not use shared libraries?
I'm working on an open source project that uses many, many bit maps
and it would be convenient to be able to read the bitmaps without
having to refer to header files with series of definitions like:

#define MUMBLE 0x8000000000000000000ULL